Annie’s Log - 2024

[Annie]

Hey everyone

New log, new me … new language?

My French is rustier than I had anticipated, but I think still workable. My speech is awful. I can hear that I’m making poor choices and adding in small words that may or may not be correct .. when in doubt, add an ‘en’ or a ‘-t-‘. This is the first time I’ve ever let it slip and I’m not entirely sure of the best way to review grammar again without wasting too much time in the weeds. At the same time, I want to be thorough. I’d like to be capable of business writing & speech. I have no real need for that now but I can imagine some dream career scenarios where it would be useful so it’s nice to have a goal and target. In the meantime, I am rereading 1Q84 in French. I was and still am tempted to reread Les chroniques de l'oiseau à ressort but I’m not sure I’m ready to spend 600 pages at the bottom of a well .. maybe. So weirdly tempting.

Russian is slow and steady. I haven’t been perfect with mango but it’s just what I need. I’m picking up words and phrases from Luna the pantera’s instagram stories which makes me quite happy. I got very brave today and installed the desktop version of Anki on my new computer in Russian. It took me about 20 minutes of googling and translating on my phone to figure out how to set it back While I did get it back to a language I could work with, it didn’t fully revert, leaving a few window titles and all the card types still in Russian. Now I can feel cool without having to try and translate & remember all the fields and options.

[Annie]

I ended up with a cold after my last post so it was a somewhat less productive week. I did manage some FSI French and some Mango for Russian. I also put a minimum of effort into finding language exchange partners on Tandem and possibly found a good one for French. Of course, you never really know long it will last until it does. I don’t enjoy the small talk and feelings of getting to know a stranger so it will be smoother overall if I can find some people for ongoing conversations. Never been much of a problem but like any social relationship, it takes a bit of work.

I’ve accidentally obligated myself to speaking with an acquaintance of my father’s in French in about three weeks. The only reasonable plan is to fall back to islands. There are only so many possible topics we can touch on in ~10 minutes maximum of conversation, right? So this week I want to mentally role play & then write out at least one conversation topic per day. I’ll examine my sentences, use deepl and linguee where needed, and maybe hopefully try out some of it at least on voice notes with an exchange partner.

[JLS]

All the best in learning!

[Annie]

All the best in learning!

Thank you ! It’s so good to be back. I love the quote in your signature line.

If I can go on on a tangent from that quote, knowing I’m among the nerdiest of friends here, I recently read the book Peak, which is another on the science of talent and incidentally lends insight into how to learn. It covers a lot of areas that hang in popular culture, 10k hours etc. Great book although the anecdotes are worth more than the author’s conclusions. Anyway, point being that I have recently been thinking about how to learn and what I know about learning and acquiring fluency in specializations outside language. I realized in the process what a deep faith I have in the ability of the brain to piece together discrete facts, skills, movements, into a fluency that feels natural and functions at a very high level. And I realized I only have that faith because I’ve done it, and I’ve only believed it was possible long enough to, and learned how to do it because of llorg and htlal before in its day. And that was such an incredible gift, a key that opens truly any door as long as I’m willing to walk down the hallway and open it. Master the pieces and
just trust because it will all come together.

Anyway.. sorry for the sentimental tangent

[JLS]

All the best in learning!

Thank you ! It’s so good to be back. I love the quote in your signature line.

If I can go on on a tangent from that quote, knowing I’m among the nerdiest of friends here, I recently read the book Peak, which is another on the science of talent and incidentally lends insight into how to learn. It covers a lot of areas that hang in popular culture, 10k hours etc. Great book although the anecdotes are worth more than the author’s conclusions. Anyway, point being that I have recently been thinking about how to learn and what I know about learning and acquiring fluency in specializations outside language. I realized in the process what a deep faith I have in the ability of the brain to piece together discrete facts, skills, movements, into a fluency that feels natural and functions at a very high level. And I realized I only have that faith because I’ve done it, and I’ve only believed it was possible long enough to, and learned how to do it because of llorg and htlal before in its day. And that was such an incredible gift, a key that opens truly any door as long as I’m willing to walk down the hallway and open it. Master the pieces and
just trust because it will all come together.

Anyway.. sorry for the sentimental tangent

The mind was made to do amazing things, so I think you're right.

Perhaps we learners think that there must be some way to manipulate the learning system to cause things to stick. Maybe, more simply, it's thinking through a "good enough" strategy and letting the head do its work.

[Annie]

Quick check in. Been a rough week but I’m carrying on with FSI French & Mango. I spent a little time on Tandem looking for exchange partners but have probably wasted more time than it was worth. Not a big deal because I appreciated a little social interaction & eventually I’ll find some worthwhile exchange.

I saw Cavesa was using Linguno so I had to try. I’m really enjoying the daily crossword puzzles. I’m really horrible at word games in any language so I’m just doing the A1 and A2 puzzles in a few minutes in the morning and not putting any real effort in. It’s somewhat embarrassingly reminding me of spelling and accents that I’ve clearly forgotten, even on basic words. This is not just the product of low contact with the language but also using a swipe keyboard on my phone never forces me to think about why is correct.

I found a potter on ig that has my favorite French accent. It feels weird to link her account for reason of her voice so I’m going to leave that off but I’ve been enjoying listening & remembering how much work my accent currently needs. I also found a Russian account @tonybirs who films a little owl. If you haven’t seen that one, it’s adorable. Between his speech and the comments, it’s just the length of interactions that I can sort of digest and pull things from.

[Cavesa]

Glad you like Linguno, it is really a great tool, I like the verb conjugation drills. But yeah, phone keyboards can be a challenge

[iguanamon]

Annie, it is good to see you back here again. I'll be following along and I wish you all the best.

[Annie]

Annie, it is good to see you back here again. I'll be following along and I wish you all the best.

So good to be back Hope you’re well. Last time I was around I believe you were still dealing with significant hurricane damage but that was years ago.


I’m struggling with too many language aspirations, too little time and mental energy. I literally want to learn everything and have very little free time. My kids came home from camp speaking arabic. I would like to try and keep up. One of my kid’s friend’s is a CODA. We’ve been hanging out at the pool which renewed interest in ASL (I have about 18 months study under my belt, over a decade ago). I haven’t had a ton of discipline to switch a portion of my day back to French, which I need to do to really. I did meet someone who seems like a good Russian exchange partner but again, hard to say whether it will last long enough to be functional. I also need to get my act back together with exercise and fitting in work amid all the summer vacation and traveling as well.


Anyway. Things are going. That actually doesn’t sound as crazy as it felt in my head. The world isn’t going to end if I spend a few hours learning how to write arabic & some of the phonetics so that I could start mango with that along side Russian, nor will it end if I spent some time working on receptive sign & getting my finger spelling more crisp & fluid. I know I won’t make a lot of progress playing with languages like this but maybe it’s ok to take any pressure off and just try to have fun for a while ? I’m not really sure. I haven’t been great at going easy on myself but I also think I might be better if I cut things back and just finish certain things, because finishing feels really good.

[Annie]

I gave up for a little bit. I had a summer. I went on vacation and ran away to Lisbon for a few days with my bestie.

And now I have been studying Arabic for a month. I thought for a minute that I would learn Levantine directly but after a little bit I realized that’s probably a mistake and I’m learning MSA the way I’m supposed to.

I used [Learn the Arabic Alphabet in 7 Minutes](https://youtu.be/NYQU0_KgWD8?si=hiLU5G1O6QaFGk3X) to start.

Then I used this [4 part playlist for learning handwriting](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1M2 ... XR6gQJTFmU)

And then I realized I still couldn’t really use the keyboard on my phone so I spent a good while just deliberately struggling through that. I was able to find some sympathetic language exchange partners to help me with my baby steps.

I still find it a bit challenging to process which letters are combined into words so I’m smashing my way through Duolingo Arabic, which is not a good course on a whole and I can see that it’s causing as many problems as it fixes, but for the letters it has introduced so far (one of the huge problems is how slowly it offers the alphabet), I am seeing progress in reading fluency (speed of picking apart or knowing what a word is composed of)

I am also using Pimsleur. I think I might try to do a passive wave, borrowing a little theory from assimil, just because it is taking me 4-5 repetitions at a minimum to pass lessons. I think I will listen to the whole first level without worrying about my ability to respond.

And that’s where we’re at.